This one isn’t very complicated. There’s only one ingredient. And it’s a great staple to keep in the fridge, ready to eat. The lowly hard boiled egg.

Except these aren’t actually boiled.

I thought pressure cooking whole eggs seemed a bit silly. After all, how hard is it to boil some water?

But this really takes all the guess work out. Y’know, the weird questions/debates like do you start with hot water or cold? How long do you let them boil? At what point do you consider them to be boiling to start timing them? Light bubbling? Full rolling boil? How vigorous of a boil do you use? ALL OUT THE WINDOW!! And they peel very nicely.

So if you Google around for Instant Pot hard boiled eggs, you’ll see a lot of references to the 5/5/5 method. 5 minute pressure cook, 5 minute natural release, 5 minutes in cold water to cool before peeling.

It’s pretty spot on, honestly. Except I found the 5 minute cooling to be not quite enough to get a good shell release. So I go 5/5/10. That’s also with changing out the water at the 5 minute mark, as it absorbs the heat from the eggs.

The yolks come out nicely, they almost always peel cleanly (nothing is 100%), and they’re ready to slice into salads, smoosh into egg salad, scoop out for Deviled Eggs, or sprinkle with salt and snack on as-is. Heck, you could even throw them in some brine and pickle them if you want!

Oh, here’s one extra nugget I’ve found. When I was using the trivet that came with my Instant Pot, I found 8 to be a good number to add. If I went to 9 or more, one or two would tend to crack. Not a big deal, unless you’re looking for perfect egg shapes, such as when doing Deviled Eggs. I think it’s a spacing thing. The more crowded they are, the more likely to crack. I did 14 with the new egg racks my daughter gave me for Christmas, and the cracking wasn’t a factor. So my unqualified hypothesis/observation is that if you crowd the eggs, they’re more likely to crack while cooking.

Here are the steps I follow, and they never disappoint.